ALI: A LIFE

by

Jonathan Eig

a new

BOOK

–

by Jonathan Eig

Winner of the 2018 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sportswriting

Muhammad Ali called himself “The Greatest,” and many agreed. He was the wittiest, the prettiest, the brashest, the baddest, the fastest, the loudest, the rashest. Now comes the first complete, unauthorized biography of one of the twentieth century's most fantastic figures. Based on more than 500 interviews with almost all of Ali’s surviving associates, and enhanced by the author’s discovery of thousands of pages of FBI records and newly uncovered Ali interviews from the 1960s, this is the stunning portrait of a man who became a legend.

Reviews

"Jonathan Eig’s masterful new biography of the champ is both captivating and highly relevant to the current discussions on race in America. The author’s comprehensive research included more than 500 interviews with more than 200 people from the boxer’s life, and material from recently discovered audio interviews with Ali."

Until yesterday's publication of "Ali: A Life," there was no life of Muhammad Ali, no comprehensive account of the man who called himself -- and came to be called -- "The Greatest." Now, where once yawned a vacuum, there now stands a cinderblock, the product of 400 interviews conducted over five years of archival research and shoe-leather detective work. The Ali who emerges from Eig's biography is not the saint so many have made him out to be, but rather a figure whose humanity is earthy, complicated, fallible and thus, in these pages, restored.

Each blow echoes on the pages of Jonathan Eig’s relentless, image-altering biography “Ali: A Life,” ushering its charismatic but confounding subject toward the silence, illness and exile that preceded his death last year at 74. Though replete with tales of race, religion, war protest, sex, marital turmoil and skulduggery, this book is, more than anything else, an indictment of boxing. The cumulative damage of Ali’s boxing career is a terrible and haunting thing to read about, and it becomes all the more so when you remind yourself that Mr. Eig’s subject is one of American sports’ most beloved figures, not some luckless tomato can.

… Eig takes the story much further, providing fascinating details on Ali’s childhood and, later, on his career as a boxer, both the well-documented triumphs but also the gradual diminution of his skills, which led to the embarrassing last fights and, eventually, to the brain damage and Parkinson’s that defined Ali’s later years. (Eig even provides a running count of all the punches Ali took in his career, a toll that increased exponentially toward the end.) And yet, after his unsparing recounting of Ali’s bad decisions and moments of cruelty to loved ones and opponents, Eig finds enduring humanity in Ali’s lighting of the Olympic torch shortly before his death and in his many acts of spontaneous kindness, noting that somehow he had “always remained warm and genuine, a man of sincere feeling and wit.” A fine biography of one of the twentieth-century’s defining figures.

Much of the story of Muhammad Ali (born Cassius Clay Jr.) is widely known. Some of us remember his life unfolding on television; others grew familiar with him when he lit the Olympic Torch in 1996, his arm trembling from Parkinson's. There have been many biographies, full and partial, including one published in May.

What makes Eig's book stand out is its broad scope, its detailed reportage and its lively, cinematic writing.

Eig’s book is a fine read on the great boxer’s life, taking him on as he was and always seeking the truth that hits closest to bone. It covers the tumultuous middle, and then the oddly sanitized and bland second half of the American Century, an era in which Muhammad Ali was among the biggest and brightest players on the stage — living a life that, far from signifying nothing, will in its outrageous grandeur and stunning humanity, stand the test of time.

Jonathan Eig’s “Ali: A Life” is the first comprehensive biography worthy of this titanic figure. The author of acclaimed books on Lou Gehrig and Jackie Robinson, Eig weaves together Ali’s athletic feats, cultural significance and personal journey. Fortified by hundreds of revealing interviews, “Ali” vigorously narrates the story of the man who transformed the landscape of race and sports.